Denial of Service (Dos) attacks are often perpetrated by malicious users in an effort to render a computing resource (such as a network node and/or server) unavailable and/or inoperable. One way that a malicious user may implement a DoS attack is by disrupting the time synchronization between trusted peers within a network. For example, a malicious user may masquerade as a trusted peer and issue illegitimate time-synchronization packets to one or more other peers using the trusted peer's Internet Protocol (IP) address and/or Media Access Control (MAC) address. These illegitimate packets may introduce inaccurate values into the time-synchronization calculation, thereby potentially rendering these peers unavailable and/or inoperable with respect to one another.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved apparatuses, systems, and methods for protecting against DoS attacks.